Of Interest

Over the past couple weeks, we have seen numerous articles about politics on campus, especially concerning Uncomfortable Learning. Ironically, though, other than from sources external to the College, there seem to have been few opinion pieces from conservative students. I would like to respond to previous opinions while also looking at some data.

It seems that a point mentioned in an opinion piece for the Williams Alternative, but glossed over as just matter-of-fact, is much more important than it appears. I am referring to how politically-concentrated the faculties and administrations are at most colleges. There exists a substantial amount of literature regarding this bias, but it is not something to just write off – these people determine most of the curriculum and rules for their respective colleges. Therefore, I decided to investigate how political donations break down among recent faculty and administration hires here at the College to get an idea of the diversity.

One can find public information on donations through the website of the Federal Election Commission (FEC). I used the FEC’s “Advanced Transaction Query by Individual Contributor” for political committees, including joint fundraising committees, to search for employees of the College.

After checking whether the employee was a professor, lecturer, instructor or administrator (rather than a student or member of the staff), it appears that of 111 considered political donations since 2007, 108, or 97.3 percent, went to Democratic and liberal organizations. Of 41 contributors, 40, or 97.6 percent, gave to liberal groups. By dollar amount, this is $39,210 out of $39,960 in total, or about 98.1 percent. These numbers don’t exactly scream any sort of political diversity.

Indeed. But even more worrying (to me) is how conservative students are treated. From the same op-ed by Matt Quinn ’17:

’d like to finish by sharing something that I observed at Williams for Life’s recent display on Planned Parenthood. Staff and faculty who saw the display were glad to see students discussing politics. Yet, as I mentioned, quite a few students reacted by questioning our sanity, throwing temper tantrums as they walked by and so on. There were still students who engaged with us, but the only sizable group that did so were not current students, but prospective students. Students from Windows on Williams were more than eager to respectfully talk about the contentious issues at hand. It’s unfortunate that the reaction among many current students is the exact opposite.

For significant research on the mistreatment of conservative professors and potential survival strategies, check out the book by Jon A. Shields and Joshua M. Dunn Sr., Passing on the Right: Conservative Professors in the Progressive University.

If you have to go to Slate to have a retort to this article you have just proven its point. Conservatives don’t speak up at Williams (or other college campuses) because they just get tired of all the petty bullshit they have to put up with from the monkeys trained by the gender studies faculty to protest violently against (almost everything) for a living.

It is important for schools like Williams to have a wide array of voices, and I think the college needs to do better to make sure conservative students are welcome. There are absolutely more conservative students than faculty, and the college needs to be mindful of this reality.

However, let’s be clear — there is not a single college in the country that demands as a matter of policy liberal politics on the part of its faculty like dozens and possibly hundreds of Christian colleges literally demand right-wing policy on a range of issues. If a Williams professor announced herself as pro-life they might be ostracized. That’s absurd. At many colleges across the US, a faculty member declaring themselves to be pro-choice would be fired. That’s much worse.

Unenforced liberal orthodoxy on liberal arts colleges is nominally a problem. But enforced orthodoxy on hundreds of colleges across the country is an actual problem.

Meanwhile for those of us in the hinterlands this is an abstract debate. I teach at a Masters comprehensive state university in Texas with lots of conservative faculty, and since most of us are not driven by ideology above all, we just find these debates to be bizarre. We also drink together, hang out together, attend one another’s kids plays and games, take one anothers’ kids to school if one of us is out of town, sit on the faculty senate together, make curricular decisions together, and generally allow our national politics to divide us not at all. My three best friends on my campus are conservatives, one of them very right wing. It allows us to mock one another over beers. I cannot imagine it becoming anything more than that. And it’s sad that so many members of Ephblog define themselves so much by ideology that vitriol is the default setting.

Now I’m going to go have a bourbon with my incredibly smart friend who is a dean, who is a fine scholar and outstanding teacher, who is an incredible father, who voted for every Republican presidential candidate from Reagan through Romney, and whose biggest flaw, hands down, is that he is an Astros fan.

Paul Kengor’s article reminds me that leftists have shoved conservatives out of the academic world – especially in fields like sociology and political science – even as their hateful, dysfunctional ideology has become discredited, and increasingly irrelevant.

Nevertheless, it is sobering to recall the extent to which those of us who rooted for the Communists to win Cold War ended up occupying high places in the Obama administration.

Here’s a little bit of good news regarding free speech at New England’s LACs. Apparently, the anti-affirmative action law professor, Richard Sander, survived a visit to Middlebury College. He was invited to speak there by the school’s courageous Middlebury College Republicans. Details below: